[The role of surgery in intensive care medicine].

The dominant role for the emergence and establishment of intensive care medicine can be attributed to surgery. The first critical care units were developed in surgical university hospitals. Numerous scientific findings and interventional procedures have been contributed to intensive care medicine by surgeons and surgical disease symptoms shaped the character of the intensive care units. Currently 40% of the intensive care beds in Germany are assigned to surgical disciplines and surgery is the prerequisite for this operative intensive care. Nevertheless, both the human and ideational impact of surgery on intensive care medicine has decreased in recent decades. Through the formation of large interdisciplinary intensive care units, surgery continues to be threatened with losing its influence even further. Now and in the future, the role of surgery has to be the maintenance and enhancement of surgical specialized intensive care medicine. Surgery has to make surgical intensive care medicine interesting and attractive for physicians again.